A youth sports blog written by Bob Cook. He's contributed to NBCSports.com, or MSNBC.com, if you prefer. He’s delivered sports commentaries for All Things Considered. For three years he wrote the weekly “Kick Out the Sports!” column for Flak Magazine.
Most importantly for this blog, Bob is a father of four who is in the throes of being a sports parent, a youth coach and a youth sports economy stimulator in an inner-ring suburb of Chicago. He reserves the right to change names to protect the innocent and the extremely, extremely guilty.
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With Referees An Endangered Species, Child-Labor Laws Change To Attract More

The supply of youth and school sports referees. umpires and other officials has long been dwindling, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s particularly noticeable, in much the same way we’ve seen the same, slow drip-drip-drip-until-it’s-dry fall of once-mighty Baby Boom-era institutions as Sears, Detroit, organized religion and the American sheep industry.

There is no single source counting the number of youth and school referees and umpires, but there is uniformity among those who need them that there aren’t enough around, and their numbers are growing only fewer. It’s become an issue for state legislatures, which are changing child-labor laws in desperate hope of attracting and keeping new officials.

In Texas, it’s very possible that there won’t be enough officials to cover every Texas football game this upcoming fall, Wayne Bernier, varsity secretary of the Amarillo chapter of the Texas Association of Sports Officials, wrote in a March 25 letter to his hometown newspaper. In an interview, Bernier — who noted in the letter than the number of football officials in the Amarillo area has declined 35 percent in five years — said he planned to stop officiating high school games after the 2013 season, but he’s staying two more years because he felt “guilt” that he might leave his colleagues in a lurch.

“From December to now, we’re down 30 officials,” he said. “That means that’s six football games we can’t cover on a Friday night because the bodies don’t exist.”

Yelling at officials is hardly a new thing at any level of sport. Coaches feel pressure to win, and protective parents can easily feel like their kid is getting jobbed. It’s easy to dislike anyone who makes a living trying to hold everyone to the letter of the law, such as attorneys, or my brother, as a child, regularly picking up the box top of a board game to read the rules instead of just playing. (My brother is now a tax accountant.) Bernier said many new officials have to work a few years to learn how to manage the catcalls, and earn the respect of coaches and fans, and that many quit before they reach that point.

There are many factors that make the pressure from coaches and fans more intense. Bernier, 44, a travel baseball father to a 14-year-old, understands that parents’ spending on youth sports can affect their attitude toward officials. It’s easy to fall into, Bernier said, “I’ve spent all this money only to have that guy blow the call.”

However, one factor Bernier thinks has altered coach and fan attitudes toward officials is something not available at youth and school events — replay review. In the drive to make sure that officiating mistakes never happen, it’s created a mindset where many people think they often do. “Today, with high-definition TV, you can zoom into a minute milli-inch of the play itself,” Bernier said. “You bring in the perception that officiating is worse now than 20 years ago, and it’s not true.” Such scrutiny also “makes it look like officiating sports is harder than it really is,” which might scare off potential recruits, he said.

So how can the numbers be bumped back up? Many organizations, such as Bernier’s chapter of the Texas Association of Sports Officials, are trying to use various media campaigns — such as writing letters to the editor to the local newspaper — to alert people to the shortage and perhaps then pique the interest of potential recruits. They also are trying to do more to help officials learn how to deal with criticism, while also gently asking fans and coaches if they can back off the criticism a bit.

Now state legislatures are getting involved in trying to expand the officiating pool. They are adjusting, or proposing to adjust, their child-labor laws so that those younger than 14 can work as referees and umpires. These bills acknowledge the reality that those younger than 14 are already working such events, and want to use that as a springboard to attract more, particularly with few other legal means of making money available to them. A law Indiana passed in 2013 was the brainchild — no pun intended — of a 13-year-0ld soccer referee who wanted to be legal. Meanwhile, a similar law is awaiting the governor’s expected signature in Kentucky, while Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are among the states where bills are working their way through the legislative process.

It’s a long time before any present 13-year-old would be officiating a high school football game. But Bernier — whose officiating experience also includes junior college, Arena Football League and NFL games (the latter as a replacement ref during a 2012 strike) said he hopes allowing younger kids to start as officials could help alleviate the referee shortage someday. The younger an official can get started, the more likely “you grow the passion, and the ability, to do it.”

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